The Matbah, the lodge kitchen
1584
In the corner of the courtyard, beneath tall chimneys, is the kitchen of the lodge, and it is much more than a kitchen. Two great arched hearths hold copper cauldrons over red glowing fires, wooden spoons and ladles hang on the walls, and life size figures in dervish dress stand at the tasks of grinding, stirring and serving. The room was built in 1584 as part of Sultan Murad the Third's enlargement of the complex, and it fed not only the dervishes but the poor of Konya and every traveller who knocked at the gate, which is why the Mevlevis called it the noble kitchen.
The kitchen was also the school. A young man who wished to join the order came here first and sat for three days on a sheepskin in the corner, watching the work without speaking. If he stayed, he entered a training of a thousand and one days under the kitchen master, learning humility by carrying water and washing pots, and learning the sema at the same time. In a side room you will see a figure practising the turn with one foot fixed to a wooden board by a nail, the way the whirl was taught, and another figure in the recess where the cook slept beside the fire. Notice the raised platform for the elders and the small windows that let out the smoke.
Cooking held a spiritual meaning for the Mevlevis. Rumi said he had been raw, then cooked, then burnt, and the order took the kitchen as a picture of the soul being softened by service. The saltcellar, the cauldron and the ladle all had their ceremonies. When the lodge closed in 1925 the hearths went cold for the first time in three and a half centuries, and this careful reconstruction, with the original coppers and stones, is the museum's way of keeping the sense of a house that welcomed everyone.
Did You Know? New dervishes learned to whirl in the kitchen with one foot held by a nail in a wooden board, so that the turn would stay on the spot.
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